Pirates’ Bight’s Wine Dinner $ donated to YEP
They continued to further develop the facility that has turned out to be something bigger and more attractive fitting for a variety of class of persons. Last Saturday June 14, 2014 the management officially commissioned the new look facility in a different style than is customary.
Rather than doing something that would see them bringing in cash to offset expenses that would have been incurred for the rebuilding they had an elaborate Wine Dinner which saw them raising funds for the furtherance of the work of the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP).
Persons of all classes turn up at the classy function cognizant of the fact that their dollars spent that night would be reinvested in the moulding of the Territory’s youths through the YEP.
Among those present were Premier and Minister of Finance Dr the Honourable D. Orlando Smith and wife, Deputy Premier and Minister for Natural Resources and Labour Dr the Hon Kedrick D. Pickering, and recently elected Chairman of the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) and Third District Representative Honourable Julian Fraser RA.
“We have been touched by the outpouring of support we received from our many friends for the turnout here tonight at such short notice for such an event,” said Tony J. Detre of Pirates’ Bight.
During the six course wine dinner the patrons to the event which numbered in the vicinity of over 100 were greeted, embraced and congratulated and shown some of the handy works by youth beneficiaries of the YEP programme.
Mr Stacy R. Mather aka Buddah who is in charge of spearheading the YEP was grateful for the initiative taken by the Management of Pirates’ Bights to host such an exquisite function with the sole objective of giving every last cent raised to the YEP.
He told this news site that the organization had a relationship of over eight years with Pirates’ Bight. “Over the last eight years we have had several outings with our children to Norman Island for tours, hikes, swimming… the entire staff has always been encouraging and proud supporters of YEP and other community organizations that have joined with us,” said Mr Mather.
Given the opportunity to say thank you to the supporters of the event Mr Mather told the gathering that YEP was started in response to a recognized void in the East End/Long Look communities and throughout the Virgin Islands where young people needed a safe haven.
“They needed a place where they could go after school, they could learn about themselves, they could learn about their communities, build civic responsibility and just have the opportunity to become something great and not just academically but socially,” he explained.
The experiences that were grasped by several youths who would have passed through the hands of YEP had borne fruit and are long lasting. “I can tell you that I am very proud of a lot of the young people that we have seen seeing over the years,” Mather said.
Very famous of YEP is their annual summer programme and according to Mr Mather they were initially targeting some 80 for this year’s programme but from all observations that number will exceed 100.
“…with partners like Sail Caribbean we are hoping that this pushes us to close to or over 700 children in the last eight years.”
YEP can today say with admiration that the growth they have seen and heard of youths that benefited from the programme has given them the zeal to continue what they have been doing. Mr Mather said that among the lessons learnt by the youths is the value of volunteerism.
YEP started a garden club, herbs from which they were able to donate to the Pirates’ Bight management for the use in their meal preparations.
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